My Take on Super Tuesday

I actually tuned in to MSNBC last night to follow the election results and to see what some of the professional talking heads were saying about it. The pundits seemed pretty happy that the results were arguably equivocal and that the contests had not been decided once and for all. I reckon it means more work and air time for them. One thing I learned that I had not known for sure before is that Peggy Noonan is a big time dumbass with so little connection to reality that she is in danger of disappearing up her own colon.

The heads kept saying that McCain couldn't get conservatives to vote for him even though it looked as if he was getting about a third of the conservative vote according to exit polls. The conservatives can't make up their minds, and I suspect it's because they reckon all their candidates suck. The big three have all been trying to out crazy each other for a year, and it wouldn't surprise me if the wingnuts just don't believe them. The results lead me to believe that the nominee will be McCain, that he will make Huckabee his running mate to appear even crazier than he really is, and that he will then proceed to alienate the wingnuts in the general election by trying to appeal to sane people. Unless they sincerely believe that McCain is truly a whackjob and that he is simply pandering to the public to get elected after he sows up the nomination, the conservatives won't be enthusiastic about him and won't deliver for him in November.

The Democratic side is harder to fathom. In contrast to the GOP, Democrats seem to be arguing over which of their big two is the dreamiest. The talking heads kept trying to make it about Bill Clinton and how mean he has been to Obama so far. They predicted that there would be a backlash against all that meanness and that voters would repudiate the negativity. If you ask me, the Democrats could do with some meanness, and most Democrats I know are looking for candidates and elected officials who will come out swinging. Neither Clinton or Obama has done much in the way of pandering to the base, and their basic message isn't going to change for the general election. I predict that Clinton will win the nomination but will have to work for it due to a hard campaign by Obama. This will make her a stronger candidate. The ticket will be Clinton/Obama.

The much vaunted "Reagan Coalition" is disintegrating. The Christianist wingnuts are catching on to the scam where the crony capitalists pretend to care about their social concerns but then ignore them. The libertarian leaning Republicans are starting to figure out that the GOP has been lying to them about their freedom agenda. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times, shame on me. The southern whites who were pissed off about civil rights are getting over it, and younger southern whites don't wax nostalgic over the halcyon days of segregation and Jim Crow. All that's left are crony capitalists, folks who aim to latch on to the crony capitalist gravy train, and some neocon dead enders. The GOP base has been augmented by bedwetters in the last decade, and they can still be counted on. I'm hopeful that a lot of them (the least craven) are waking up to the idea that the GOP has been scaring them and that the GOP is actually a bigger threat to them than any external enemy.

Can the GOP come out of this a better party? It's hard to see how it could get any worse.